Unlike our more adorable and endangered sea otter, vultures have a public relations issue. Admiring vultures is an acquired appreciation. Their bald heads with massive beaks that can tear through a thick hide, and their food source — dead animals — is an unlikely point of polite conversation. It’s a image issue.

There are people, historically and presently, who for lack of a better phrase, were born under a bad sign. I’ve known some of them personally. For one reason or the other, they seem to have never developed a conscience that allowed them to judge good from bad.

For the now, I’m harvesting my experiences and knowledge. I’m loading my cargo hold with the wisdom from life-learned. It’s my mission as a writer, a communicator, and as an elder-in-training to share what I understand.

From an extended family member, I learned about Kimberly, the mother of a 15-year-old daughter. On this Mother’s Day, Kimberly and her daughter will likely make the most of every minute because Kimberly is in Stage 4 breast cancer.

Caitlin Jenner fueled a conservative firestorm with her change — and even more so because Jenner has a history of leaning to the conservative right. OMG. Even a conservative can be transgender! When that happened, I read posts by alleged “real men” who were about 2 days out from birthing cows. The world must be ending.

Eager to give what I might to bring light to the table of American politics, as opposed to the impenetrable block wall under maniacal construction that divides your vision from mine, as opposed to chatting about truth and lies and finding a way through unwieldy thorns, a group mediation was offered to help uplift the American electorate. I read the invitation as calming the fire with love. That resonated.

Anger. I know it well. Anger has boiled within me to the point of dehydration of the senses. I let anger take my fertile body and transform it into a desert — something I didn’t like. I cursed the hot sand, the barrenness of rocks, plants and life. I let anger guide me to my own skeletal form, like the white bones and skulls made famous by Georgia O’Keefe.